Swissjazzorama on the way to becoming a foundation
The Swissjazzorama association wants to raise a well-endowed endowment capital in order to transfer its archive of Swiss jazz history into a foundation. The aim is also to raise funds from the federal government.
This spring, the Swissjazzorama archives, including copyright and internet rights, are to be transferred from the current association to a foundation. This change is necessary "because the federal government only wants to consider supra-regionally or nationally active applicants with an established organizational structure when allocating its funds". In order to meet this requirement, the Swissjazzorama association - which will continue to exist as a support association - has set itself the goal of amassing a well-endowed foundation capital.
In early summer 2016, Swissjazzorama was able to concentrate its holdings, which had previously been spread across seven locations, at Ackerstrasse 45 in Uster. Hans Peter Künzle, the long-standing head of the Jazz and Pop department at Zurich University of the Arts, has been in charge of the archive since September 2016. In order to arouse the interest of the younger generation and students in particular, the digitization of the holdings is to be stepped up.
The Jazz Archive was founded in 1989 in Rheinfelden from a private collection and was transferred to Uster nine years later. It collects, catalogs and archives audio and video media, specialist literature and other evidence from the world of jazz. The collection now consists of over 60,000 sound recordings, around 1,000 audio-visual media, 70,000 musicians' records, 4,900 sheet music scores, almost 3,000 posters and around 3,000 books, and is constantly being funded by private donations.
